Friday, February 25, 2011

KINGDOM COME: "Rendered Waters"

Okay, so you may remember Kingdom Come from the “Great led Zeppelin Controversy” that surrounded their first album, mainly because it sounded pretty much like Led Zeppelin. Some people overlooked the fact that regardless of this it was a fantastic album, and it wasn’t long before Kingdom Come drifted off many radars. “Rendered Waters” comes at us 23 years later, and is an odd disc, consisting of three new tracks and eight re recordings, including one from Lenny Wolf’s previous band Stone Fury.

I suppose it’s only fair to tackle the new tracks first. “Blue Trees, which is a rather generic KC track, heavy on the bass rhythm with Wolf playing the Plant angle up as much as he ever did. It’s not bad at all, just nothing too special. “Is It Fair Enough” mixes acoustic and electric quite well, but again there’s nothing that gets under the listener’s skin, nothing to really get excited about. “Don’t Remember” is pretty similar, building up to a crunching mid section from a slow start. Again, it has it’s moments, but on a full album would be considered filler.

Of the re recordings, nothing really stands out as an improvement on the original, although I have to admit it was great hearing Stone Fury’s “Break Down The Wall” again, mainly because it’s a cracking track. On the whole, the album would have been better if the original recordings had been polished up rather than redone, because there’s nothing wrong with them. I can’t really recommend this to avid fans of the band, as the three tracks hardly make it value for money, and if you’re new to the band you should check out the original albums instead. Ultimately, this album is for Lenny Wolf, so I hope he enjoys it, because as good as some of the songs are there’s nothing here that anyone else needs to purchase.